Gotta Get in Shape
by fmapreshwab
Summary: An embarrassing incident forces Rodney to realize he's not in the best physical condition.


Radek Zelenka stifled a yawn as the transporter doors whisked closed and open again to the view of a new hallway on the other side of the city. McKay had been riding him particularly hard lately to get all the new systems up and running, and it had been a very long night.

The senior scientist had been unusually grumpy the past few weeks, leading to some speculation among the other engineers as to when the last time McKay had gotten laid might have been. Radek may have organized a pool of some sort if this had been two years ago. But those problems were behind him.

Zelenka cracked his neck as he stopped at a doorway halfway down the corridor. The door to his lab hummed, almost as in greeting, as he waved his hand across the warmly lit control panel. The lights activated as his heel hit the sleek floor, and for a moment Radek's problems seemed to bleed away. He may have had quarters in the upper spires of the city, but down here was where he felt at home.

He was only here a moment, long enough to gather his research data and the notes he'd made so far on the systems they had yet to activate in the tower. The lab was the only place he felt confident storing such important work, and it gave Zelenka all the excuse he needed to visit his lab in the mornings before facing Rodney. It was getting more and more difficult to tolerate the man and his ego and his demands and his whining little voice. 'žádná,' Radek chided himself, 'to není jeho chyba.'

It really wasn't the other man's fault that Zalenka was so out of sorts this morning. He'd only had such a long night because he was convinced he'd found something. The first real progress he'd made on decrypting the city's non-critical systems had made for a long, anxious night. For the first time since he'd been a child, Radek had been too excited to sleep. Nights like that were frustrating the next morning, but they were all the proof he needed that he'd made the right choice in coming to Atlantis.

Even if it did turn out to be a one-way trip, as it had already proven for so many of their colleagues.

Gathering his things, Radek made the trip again, down the long corridor to the transporter. This time, rather than the light at the upper left of the map of the city that would take him to his rooms, or the light at the center of the southern spire, which he supposed would just open the doors again on the hallway which led to his lab, Zelenka touched the brightest point of all, the one which led to the center of the city, the tip of the central spire, the control room. The light which led to work.

It was three hours before McKay turned up, but Zelenka had kept himself busy, and by the time the physicist was warming up to his morning outburst, Radek had something to show for his work.

"It is a life sign detector," Radek started, but was, unsurprisingly interrupted.

"Congratulations, we knew that. Are we ready to move on to new information?" Rodney rolled his eyes in an affectation of boredom, but Radek could see the spark of curiosity behind the condescension.

As such, he held his tongue for a moment before speaking, until he was sure he could do so without saying something he'd regret. "You did not let me finish. It is a life sign detector, but it is also medical triage scanner."

Rodney cocked his head to one side, and Zelenka knew he had him. The scientist was intrigued, and the engineer knew just how to reel him in. "See here," Radek said, pointing at the screen. The control room was pulled up, showing a series of small blue dots representing the scientists and control room personnel. A nod was Rodney's only response, but the engineer knew better.

Zelenka smiled. "Now watch this." He took a deep breath, cheeks puffed out and all, and held it. After fifteen seconds, nothing happened. After thirty, one of the other scientists shifted uncomfortably, coughing into her hand. At forty five seconds, McKay began to speak derisively, but Radek couldn't hear him over the blood pounding in his ears. At one minute, just as his vision began to swim, he heard a chime from the panel to his left, and knew he'd made his point.

As the air rushed into his lungs, Radek looked over at the screen of the machine he'd been tinkering with. His dot, set slightly aside from the others as he stood near the panel, had turned purple. The implications were clear. So long as someone was at this station, nobody in the city would be isolated from medical care. This gave them their best chance at surviving injuries and other situations that could kill unnecessarily.

"Interesting," was all McKay said, but it was as close to "Good work" that anyone had heard so far. Radek decided to take the win.

* * *

It wasn't until hours later, when Zelenka had moved on to the next device and the next engineering mystery, that the panel dinged once more. For a moment, he didn't notice. He was absorbed in his work, and the ping meant very little to him. Then the board sounded again, more insistent.

Remembering his presentation from earlier in the day, Zelenka dropped his tools and raced to the board, which displayed a three dimensional map of the city. More than one hundred dots blinked dimly in a happy blue, but those dots meant nothing to him. What he cared about was the red dot in the northeast corner of the city, high in the tower. This was one of the towers which housed the labs.

"Zelenka to Dr. Beckett," Radek called frantically as he slapped the radio headset attached to his ear just hard enough to jostle it from its resting place.

Beckett took only a moment to answer. "Aye, lad. What can I do for ye?"

"I need medical team to northeast tower, sixth floor. I think there is emergency!" The red dot was blinking faster and faster, and Zelenka was worried.

After helping guide the rescue team to the correct lab, Zelenka listened anxiously over the open radio channel. Carson spoke first. "The bloody door won't open."

As Zelenka prepared to talk him through opening the sealed door, he heard Rodney's voice faintly in his ear. "Don't...don't come in here. What do you want?"

Radek jumped in on the conversation over the radio. "Rodney, life signs detector showed a problem. I thought you were having a heart attack. Are you all right?" Before his eyes, the red dot on the screen faded, separating into two dots in the room, while four more dots waited outside. "Rodney...were you...having sex?"

John Sheppard's voice just barely carried from the other end of the radio. "McKay, you have got to get in better shape."


End file.
